November 23, 2012

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush is being talked up as the frontrunner for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2016 because of his close ties to Mexico. A dozen years ago, however, a small bilingual magazine called El Andar courageously investigated the Mexican friends of the Bush Dynasty.

Although a Feb. 13 Washington Post story claimed that President Bush's links to Mexico have been largely "ceremonial," El Andar has documented ties between the Bush family and a colorful cast of Mexican power-brokers going back four decades to an oil business partnership between George Bush and Jorge Diaz Serrano.

The Bushes are of course a famously friendly family, with a huge circle of acquaintances. Several of their Mexican connections, however, have later caused them some embarrassment. For example, Diaz Serrano would go on to spend much of the 1980s in a Mexican prison for embezzling $58 million while he headed Mexico's Pemex oil monopoly.

El Andar also reported that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, occasionally vacationed at the Puebla ranch of Raul Salinas, the brother of former Mexican president Carlos Salinas (1988-1994). Raul can no longer host anyone, though. He is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for the murder of his ex-brother-in-law. Raul's wife was arrested in Switzerland when she attempted to remove close to $100 million from their Swiss bank account.

The Florida governor, whose wife Columba was born in Mexico, told Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald, "I've seen [Raul Salinas] 10 times, at the most. I found him to be a very nice person, with very nice children . . . It's kind of shocking [to learn of] all these allegations.'' Jeb Bush said that he and Raul "never did any business.''

... Indeed, one target of [El Andar], the family of Carlos Hank Gonzales, a powerful politician in Mexico's former ruling party (the PRI), has threatened to sue the tiny magazine for $10 million over Reynolds' article "The NAFTA Gang."

According to Forbes Magazine, Carlos Hank Gonzales, a lifelong public servant, is a self-made billionaire. He justifies his good fortune with this elegant saying: "A politician who is poor is a poor politician."

His son, Carlos Hank Rohn, is the primary shareholder in the $2 billion dollar Laredo National Bank of Texas. The controversial bank's CEO Gary G. Jacobs contributed a total of $85,000 to George W. Bush's two campaigns for governor, according to the campaign contribution database maintained by Texans for Public Justice. Jacobs has also contributed to numerous Democrats in recent years.

A draft report leaked from the federal National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) alleged, "Several years of investigative information strongly support the conclusion that the Hank family has laundered money on a massive scale, assisted drug trafficking organizations in transporting drug shipments and engaged in large-scale public corruption." ...

Jacobs has attributed federal criticism of his chief stockholder to ethnic bias: "They don't want Latinos to own or control banks in the U.S."

Journalists in Mexico who write too bluntly about the rich and powerful have more to worry about than lawsuits. For example, a Tijuana gossip columnist named Héctor Félix Miranda was gunned down in 1988. Two Hank family bodyguards were eventually convicted.

And here's Julia Reynolds' story in El Andar on "Los Amigos de Bush" on the narco ties of some of the Bush family's chief Mexican-American supporters in Texas.

Back in 1995, Jorge G. Castaneda, who was Mexican Foreign Minister in the early 2000s, wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

There has also been a great deal of speculation in Mexico about the exact nature of Raul Salinas' close friendship with former President George Bush's son, Jeb. It is well known here that for many years the two families spent vacations together--the Salinases at Jeb Bush's home in Miami, the Bushes at Raul's ranch, Las Mendocinas, under the volcano in Puebla. There are many in Mexico who believe that the relationship became a back channel for delicate and crucial negotiations between the two governments, leading up to President Bush's sponsorship of NAFTA.

In 2004, another Salinas brother, Enrique, was found murdered in his car, gangland-style.

The difference in this regard between George W. and Jeb was twofold: Jeb really does speak Spanish and really isn't a screw-up, so he was much more plugged into what was going on at the top in Mexico in the early 1990s, which was pretty Borgia-like.

The frontrunner? Are we really going to have a Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton election in 2016? The son and brother of former president against the wife of former presidents? How embarrassing if that happens.

Misha Glenny, the BBC journalist who wrote McMafia and Dark Market, noted that mafia states and places infested with the mafia tend to be unstable, because everything is settled with violence. Assassinations and killings as BUSINESS DISPUTES are something the elite does not think about, Hollywood to the contrary, in the US (for now). That's common practice in Russia, where the crime oligarchs settle their affairs with bullets.

Of course, we are at war with Uganda (actually the Lord's Resistance Army) because a crony of Obama has a mine in Northern Uganda and various other oil/mining interests that can't get going until the LRA is crushed. Obama's family crony ties are probably Jeb Bush's squared or even cubed. Tony Rezko, Blago, Rahm, Soros, etc.

Jeb Bush is a non-starter. It won't matter anyway, Dems will just cheat, the Obama model made that clear.

And here's Julia Reynolds' story in El Andar on "Los Amigos de Bush" on the narco ties of some of the Bush family's chief Mexican-American supporters in Texas."

I dont want to in a position to defend the Bush family but give them a break on this.Mexican Americans in Texas having narco ties !!!Shocking! Just as I was shocked shocked when I learnt that prominent and respectable Italian Americans like Rudy Giliani have mob ties or the Arab American Miss USA 2010 Rima Fakih from Dearborn has Hezbollah ties!

We all have relatives and associations we are not proud of.More so if you happen to be part of an ethnicity whose members are disproportionately represented in some criminal enterprise

Except for WASPs. They are perfect. They never break the law or have relatives that do so. Must be all that child abuse they do, turns their boys into perfect little zombies."

Actually WASPs and WASP run institutions have been stabbing their country in the back for a long time.It didnt take too long after the founding of the OSS by the Social Register for the CIA to become Soviet stooges!

When those anti Semites berate Jews for the destructive cultural influence-they actually have a point -liberal Jews are overwhelmingly overrepresented in the media and academia and use to spew out their counterproductive codswallop.However for the most Jews are just blindly following in the WASP footsteps.Jewish run Hollywood was patriotic when WASPs were and when they turned against traditional values with a vengeance then Jews followed suit.Same goes for finance- Wall Street for the most part was and remained a WASP dominion.They initially let Jews in and gave them as much power and authority as Citibank gave Vikram Pandit i.e a diversity face with real influence.Hard for us believe now but Jews were considered exotic at one point!

Well, I don't care the Bushes can have Texas or Florida, there are better places. Whites should take a look at Oklahoma instead of TExas it has less more minorites and cheap housing as well and even lower unemployment.

Well, I'm not a MCCain fan but Karl Rove you the black child against MCCain. She was an adopted daughter from India. So, Bush probably has a more corrupt background than Reagan no surprise. Reagan was pushed to legalized Mexicans because of big agriculural money from the California and Harry Segerstrom who created South Coast Plaza but whose family was once into farming and the Irvine Company which now mainly is into Real Estate but once was into family as well.

I agree Obama has those connections too . Bush allowed another 4 million illegal immirgants in, so he probably could help his white and MExican friends with labor and sell houses to Mexicans for 600,000 in Santa Ana Ca.

"I dont want to in a position to defend the Bush family but give them a break on this."

There's no suggestion the Bushes were involved in anything, but it pays us to know who was bankrolling them, who these friends were, what motives they might have had, and what favors they might well have expected. Perhaps things like ease or elimination of controls on cross-border traffic, for instance. We should also learn more about this just to learn about the phenomena of interests outside the US closely tied to US politicians, no doubt we'll see more of it.

Surprised nobody here ever mentions Neil (of savings & loan fame) whose name was common knowledge to Americans as recently as the late 90s. The quality of catty anti-Bush kibbitzing has declined over the years

If Jeb was the one elected in 2000, you'd be saying now that Jeb is a screw-up and George W. is not

Nah, I feel there is more than meets the eye to this, a struggle to see what is under one's nose, so to speak. My theory is Sailer got frozen out of some deal involving that Arlington Stadium renovation 20 years back

The Republicans have "put their hands" in the Bush fire two times and been burned two times.

One has to wonder how stupid the Republicans would have to be to "put their hands" in the Bush fire for a third time. Any party that would listen to another Bush, let alone nominate a Bush, definitely has no real reason to exist.

Another thing that people overlooked regarding George W Bush's experience" is that it is really the Lt Governer that runs things(Rick Perry at the time).It is like a President and Prime Minister set up in parliamentary governments.This is how he pretty much ran the country-delegated responsibility to an extreme degree and the generals in Iraq and Afghanistan run wild like Pasha ,handing over the reins of the economy to Hank Paulson and Bernanke.Lets not even into the crony appointments of the FEMA director and Condoleeza Rice.The results are there for all to see!

In many ways Obama ,though a smart enough guy is really a lazy shit lacking discipline.Undoing the Bush protocols on terror, Iraq and Afghanistan policy and his style of managing the cabinet was just too much work and pain!Bush had bequeathed to Obama an administration on autopilot and all he did was switched some faces ,some with different ideologies,most with just with a slightly higher appetite for statism than their Republican precedents and he has been coasting ever since!

All in all I think Cheney wouldve made a much better president!Even if he was a transparent draft dodger!

Whiskey - the real and clearly effective crime is filling the country with a new electorate which you seem strangely reluctant to admit. Election fraud is still pretty high risk compared to just importing more people who will vote Democrat. Your deflection on this issue is rather puzzling.

Steve, would be interesting to continue the Bush family connections' international corruption theme by also revisiting some old writing you did about the links between some of the neocons in the Dubya's administration and the Russian oligarchs.

Anti-gnostic is correct, Whiskley lives in Orange County where a new people has been imported before Reagan became Preisdent. Santa Ana was already 48 percent Mexican in 1980. Probably the OC grew more Mexican under Ronald Reagan and George H Bush and Clinton than George W Bush so Whiskley is more lenient on George W Bush.

I'm looking forward to the Clinton/Kennedy vs Romney/Bush race of 2016. After all, keeping power inside a few families did such wonderful things for Europe, it can't help but do a similarly good job for the US. In fact, why not cut out the small time crap? There must be a few Hapsburgs, Romanovs, and Windsors lying around whom we could get into US politics. If bloodline and family connections are all that is necessary, they will surely qualify.

"The frontrunner? Are we really going to have a Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton election in 2016? The son and brother of former president against the wife of former presidents? How embarrassing if that happens."

Not as embarrassing as who's in charge now. Jeb Bush Jr. was arrested for banging a girl in a mall parking lot, public drunkedness, and resisting arrest. His sister is a junkie.

Well, I remember seeing on Lou DObbs the signing of the ICRA-Reagan's legalization of 1986 George H Bush VP in the background, maybe the whole idea was George H Bushes. Reagan should have not chossen the man,

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